What We Really Learn on Middle School Field Trips

This past weekend my daughter attended the State Science Fair at UGA. When we found out she had made it to state, we were of course proud and happy. I remember my thinking being “Wow, what a great experience for her academically!” followed immediately by, “It will be even better for her to go away on her own for a weekend.”

You see I can be a little overprotective of my girl. And she can be a little overly attached to us as a family. So when I heard that the kids from her school were to ride up on a bus together and stay in a hotel together while being chaperoned only by their teachers, a part of me panicked. But the rest of me said,

“It is time. Let her go.”

So away she went Friday morning at 5:30 am on the big yellow school bus ostensibly to further her knowledge in science and engineering.

We texted a few times. She let me know they got there okay. We told her “goodnight” and “good morning.” But that was pretty much it.

On Saturday our family drove up to see her awards ceremony and then we packed her up in the car to head home. Once we were in the car and headed out of town I asked her, “So how was science fair?” A part of me actually expected her to tell me thing she learned about, you know, SCIENCE.

But here is what followed.

“Well, the bus ride lasted forever. And Jenny say with the boys in the back of the bus and not with the girls which I thought was weird. And then we met some cute boys while we were waiting to be interviewed by the judges. O wait, I just found one of them on Instragram. You think I should follow him? The hotel food was really expensive so we ate all our meals at the mall next door. I ate orange chicken for dinner and breakfast and lunch! It was really good orange chicken but now my stomach kind of hurts. We walked around Sears for an hour and sat and talked in all their lawn and garden displays. Sears is awesome! The boys were so crazy all weekend. Why do boys act so crazy?”

Yeah, this went on for about an hour until she finally fell asleep from sheer exhaustion. Too much orange chicken and gossiping in the hotel room at night. Not enough sleep.

I was irritated for about a second that no one made her eat anything other than fried chicken covered in orange flavored sugar sauce for a whole weekend and embarrassed that she had tormented the sales people at Sears.

And then I remembered my own story.

My eighth grade year our brave teachers took all the kids in the honors science classes on a field trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. A pretty cool field trip for sure. There are a few things I remember about actual Space Camp. I remember the machine that pushed you into the wall with centrifugal force and then dropped the floor out so we were supported only by the Gs gluing us to the wall. I remember eating freeze dried ice cream.

But mainly I remember this:

Our teachers had us staying four kids to a room at this cheap hotel. I was in a room with three of my best friends and all of us had a crush on the same guy. He was tall, dark, and handsome. He even had a little facial hair coming in. We were over the moon for him. And as fate would have it his hotel room was right next to ours.

I cannot remember whose idea it was to sneak out of our room after “lights out” and knock on the boys’ door. We were all pretty much good girls so that fact we did this at all still surprises me. The proximity of all that testosterone and cuteness must have been more than our adolescent selves could handle.

So sneak out we did and the boys were more than glad to host us in their room. Now let me say nothing really bad actually happened. We just sat on cheap hotel beds and talked and giggled. And apparently we giggled loudly because after about 15 minutes of adrenaline filled rule breaking, we heard a loud knock on the door followed by one of our teacher’s voice demanding we open the door.

All I remember was the panic I felt. I am sure we were all scared. But most of the kids stayed to face their doom while myself, the future minister, and my buddy Quentin, the future lawyer and judge, both ran for it. Quentin and I ended up cowering in the shower together hoping we would be conveniently overlooked.

A word about Quentin and I’s shower encounter. I didn’t think anything of it at the time other than I was hiding with my friend and hoping not to get caught. But looking back on it now it was a bit of a revolutionary of moment. You see I was a young white girl and Quentin was a young black guy. Now my parents would have been furious about me hiding in the shower with any guy no matter the race, but if Quentin and I had been in the shower together for whatever reason 50 or 100 years before good old 1986, my reputation would have been tarnished for life and Quentin would have likely been arrested or shot or worse. We were in Alabama for crying out loud. But thanks be to God and Martin Luther King Jr. in 1986 the son of a former slave and the daughter of a former slave owner could not only sit together on the red hills of Georgia, they could hide together in the showers of cheap hotels in Alabama.

But the bonding moment ended all too soon when we heard the door to the bathroom open and our teacher’s footsteps cross the linoleum floor. I am sure it was a bad moment when the other kids got caught in a hotel room together. But let me tell you when your teacher rips open the curtain to find your young girl self hiding with a boy in a shower, it is nothing less than mortifying.

Our teacher didn’t say much to us that night. She didn’t have to. We were all embarrassed and scared to death she would call our parents. But she didn’t. Because I guess she already knew what I am learning now. That sometimes the thing a book smart kid needs most is to learn how to live their life on their own. How to make choices and face the consequences.

25 years later I realize how important this moment was. The moment when I had my first taste of freedom. The moment I made a few less than perfect choices but lived to tell the tale.

And I have to say I don’t regret a second of it (Sorry Mom). Because we all turned out just fine. One of us has a career in law enforcement. One is a lawyer. One a stay at home mom.

And Quentin? He was a hot shot lawyer bringing justice to Atlanta for many years until he recently became a judge. Every once in a while I will see him on TV being interviewed about a trial or being honored for something. When I do I inevitably shout out to my kids, “Hey, I hid in a shower with that guy on a field trip back in eighth grade.”

I only hope my daughter’s memories of her first big trip by herself will last as long.

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After serving as a minister for several years in the United Methodist Church, I am now a raiser of children, teacher of yoga, and author of the advent devotional Lighten the Darkness. I write at Centering Down and elsewhere about finding balance and grace in the midst of this busy, messy, beautiful life.

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